To a human being, a galactic collision is about the slowest thing imaginable. The four massive galaxy clusters now known to be clashing some 5 billion light-years from Earth have been in pretty much their current state of duress since before recorded human history. On the scale of the universe, however, this pile-up is occurring as quickly as any highway accident — and like any high-speed collision, its impact is having some incredibly violent consequences.

The collision in question is called MACS J0717+3745, really a meta-object comprising thousands of galaxies collected into four major galaxy clusters. These clusters are converging and melding, becoming one enormous super-cluster the likes of which astronomers have rarely seen. More to the point, this is the first time astronomers have been lucky enough to spy such a monster in the act of forming. They’ve collected all sorts of data, finding some truly incredible fall out in the midst of an aeons-long galactic tableau.

When galaxies collide, most of the actual stars move past each other without interacting; even with gravity pulling them together, the vast majority of a galaxy is empty space. As a result, it’s mostly the clouds of gas that interact first, enormous pockets of simple particles that have not yet formed into distinct stellar objects. By viewing this event with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and New Mexico’s Very Large Array, astronomers were able to see an incredible hotspot at the center of this collision. The gas clouds are compressing and creating amazing levels of heat.

As these galaxies collide with their incredible volumes of matter, they are creating a sort of particle accelerator that can heat gasses to hundreds of millions of degrees. There is essentially a cyclical heat shockwave moving through this system and dramatically ramping up the movement of particles. The final result are particles carrying millions of times more energy than those sent through the Large Hadron Collider. Reaching such energies, the particles often manage to break away and head off into space. The researchers are looking into whether accelerators of this type could be a source of high-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth with some regularity.

Mankind’s Large Hadron Collider can’t hold a candle to this super-galaxy.

One interesting aspect of MACS J0717+3745 is that its incredible mass means that it warps space-time more than just about anything else in the known universe. The technique called “gravitational lensing” makes use of observed deflections in the paths of light beams that pass close to a massive object like a black hole — or a galactic super-cluster. Einstein’s own theory of relativity was first powerfully confirmed by this method, as it predicted observed deflections of light passing close to the sun.

Lensing with this object will allow Hubble to look deeper into space than ever before — which is why it is being called a cosmic telescope. Astronomical oddities like this can often support several different styles of inquiry and provide insight to many scientists. Here on Earth, for instance, we’re still discovering the importance of natural particle accelerators; even data collected 5 billion light years from home could end up being applicable in the every-day.